


Sick Day

by This_ape_writes



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-23 23:57:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2560511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/This_ape_writes/pseuds/This_ape_writes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The flu hits Scully on a trip to Texas...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sick Day

He knew something was off when he woke up to his own alarm for once and not to her pounding on his door. That never happened. Not when they were flying home. But here he was, showered, dressed and packed up. The car was even loaded for the airport and she still had yet to make an appearance. In fact, when he knocked on her door she was still in pajamas. 

Worse than that, when he followed her into her room she didn't even acknowledge him but crawled back on top of the disheveled sheets to lay back down and cover her head with a nearby pillow. When he questioned her he got a snapped 'shut up Mulder' and so he did just that.

He was a bit concerned. 

When he began to pack her clothes for her and didn't even receive a cursory 'you don't have to do that' his concern went from a bit to a lot. 

And when she didn't even bother with a shower but threw on some clothes and then crawled into the rental car without even trying to carry out her bags his concern went from a lot to defcon 1. 

After dropping her bags into the trunk and shoving it closed, he opened the drivers side door and leaned into the car, bracing himself against the armrest in the center so he could rest his hand on her arm. 

"Scully? Are you okay?" He asked. 

He heard her sigh and was prepared to dig his heels in and fight if she answered her usual 'I'm fine', but she shocked him by letting out a small groan and shaking her head. 

"No. I'm not. I need to go home," she said. 

She sounded miserable. 

Instinct lifted his hand and pulled it towards her forehead and he almost flinched back when he was met with cooktop level heat coming off of her skin. 

"Jesus, Scully you're burning up! We should get you to a hospital," he said. 

This was met with a frown and her shaking her head. 

"No. We should get me to the airport so we don't miss our flight. I'm not in critical danger. I just have a fever. And the aches. It's probably the flu, and I'll probably infect the whole plane load of passengers but I feel like shit so I don't really care." To spite his terror that was building in his stomach he can't help but smile at the fact that after six years together as partners she has just now for the first time uttered the word shit. This from the woman that yells damn and corrects herself to darn every time. 

It's kind of the best thing to happen on this waste of a time trip. 

Scully just said shit. 

He lets himself grin bigger. 

"Mulder please?" She says and his grin is gone like that. He rubs his thumb across her forehead before pulling his hand back and climbing into the car. 

"Ok. Let's get you home."

That turns out to be easier said than done. 

Between the security line and a storm in Memphis they are coming up on an hour and a half in the terminal and they still aren't on a plane. 

The only thing that's helping him keep somewhat calm is the fact that he's been able to handle almost everything allowing her to curl up outside their gate and try to sleep. 

He's now standing in line to try and get information on how delayed their flight will actually be. He can see her from where he is standing if he leans a bit to the side. He watches her shift against their luggage trying to use his duffle bag as a pillow and he sees her shiver and curl up tighter under his suit jacket he's given her. He watches this, and a strange feeling rolls over him. 

He's never been a real care taker-y type. Closest he comes is his fish and he really only feeds them. He doesn't even clean out the tank he hires a guy to do that. 

He's had people close to him before too, but he's never lived with anyone so if they ever got sick he would quarantine himself as far away from them as he cold and wait until they were well again. He's never wanted to help. 

Until now. Right now he is consumed with wanting to fix this. That's not normal for him. He's not quite sure what to do with this new desire to make his partner feel better. 

He reaches the counter to be told there is no new info on their flight and he bites his tongue to keep from cursing and smiles instead. 

He feels helpless. 

That's not a good feeling when you are actively trying to feel useful instead. 

He decides to walk over to the store across the walkway and look around for inspiration. 

He's shocked when it actually comes. 

To spite his lack of previous caretaker opportunities it turns out instincts are latently in there anyway. 

He grabs two large bottles of water out of a cooler in the corner and some Tylenol cold and flu from a shelf along one wall. He's read all the other packaging first and has decided this fits the best with her symptoms. He also grabs some orange juice. He figures the vitamin c in it couldn't hurt. 

He wanders his way to the back wall remembering how he has left his partner struggling to get comfortable. He grabs a small square travel pillow and then reaches up to grab a blue fleece blanket as well. It's rolled up tightly like a tiny sleeping bag and when he touches it, it turns out it is ridiculously soft. So soft that as he wanders around the store he holds it against his chest and frees up one of his hands just so that he can pet it.

As he walks around his mind wanders to sleeping bags and he grins thinking of that night they spent stranded in a forrest where the caretaker roles had been reversed and she'd kept him warm and distracted him with singing. 

This really is the least he can do for all the times like that she's made him ok. He just wishes he could do a lot more. 

He wanders over to the magazines and wonders what he could get that might take her mind off of things for a bit. He glances over the titles and realizes that over the years he can't remember her ever reading any type of magazine. 

Well not like these anyway. She has a subscription to the JAMA journal of medicine. He's seen her travel with that before and they've even had conversations about the covers, which feature a different famous work of art every month. It's been well over fifteen years since he took any kind of art history class but he remembers quite a bit from it. He likes to watch her face transform behind her reading glasses into a look of being impressed when he recognizes the artist or the name of the piece. 

He doubts they carry such a magazine here. 

He decides instead that anyone can read People magazine and be at least mildly entertained by it so he adds that to the growing pile of things to buy and heads to the checkout. 

He adds in a snack for her and one for himself just because, and with crinkling shopping bags in tow he walks back across the terminal. He stops on his way to listen to the overhead speaker but it's just paging someone by the name of Janice O'neal and not giving him flight details. He goes back to ignoring the announcement before continuing on and flopping down on the floor next to her. 

She jumps when he does and she frowns at him. 

"Mulder what..." But before she can finish her question he's torn open the package of Tylenol and cracked open the top of one of the bottles of water. 

"Scully see if you can sit up. I got you some Tylenol." The look that passes over her face as she struggles to sit up is that same soft impressed smile that she gets when he recognizes the artwork on her journals and he grins as she takes the bottle from him and holds out her hand for the pills. 

She swallows it down and hands the bottle back to him. 

"Thank you," she says. He waves her thanks away with his hand as he resecures the lid on the water and then reaches over to her to help her not just be under his jacket but to slide her arms inside and actually put it on. 

"You're shivering," he points out as he tugs the jacket into place and then reaches into the bag to retrieve the super soft blanket. He uses his teeth to snap the little plastic fasteners that've keep it rolled up tight and he shakes it free. 

"Mulder what the hell did you buy?" She asks in a tone of protest as he retrieves the pillow as well and lays it down on their bags. He is gentle about it but firm as he pushes on her to encourage her to lay back down and to spite the protesting tone she doesn't resist but snuggles into the pillow immediately. He shakes the blanket so it's fully open and he lays it around her, ignoring her question until he makes sure she's as comfortable as she can be. He scoots over on the floor so that he's no longer across from her but next to her instead. He can then lean against the wall behind them and he drags the bags closer to him so he can answer her question with visual aids. 

He holds up each purchase as he explains. 

"Water. You need to stay hydrated. Orange juice for the nutrients. I got those cheese crackers you like just in case you have an appetite later. A snack for myself because I'm still a selfish prick," this earns him a small laugh and he grins. "Oh and a magazine to distract you later if you're up for it." 

"Thank you," she says without opening her eyes. He looks down at her and fights the sudden urge to reach down and run his fingers across her hair. She's not a damn cat. He can not just pet his friend's head in the middle of the Dallas Fort Worth airport. 

Can he?

He puts everything he's holding into just one shopping bag and he talks himself in and out of it before he grits his teeth, braces for impact and goes in for a landing. She jumps slightly when he first makes contact but as he runs his hand over her hair, sliding his fingers closer to her scalp with each pass he feels her relax and he hears her sigh. 

"I'm sorry you're sick," he says. 

"S-not your fault," she slurs. "This time anyway," she adds with a snort. 

"What does that mean?" He asks growing bolder in his movements as he begins to wind his fingers into her hair. 

"You don't remember coughing on me when we were in Montana and giving me that horrible cold at the beginning of the year?" She says. "We both coughed like tuberculosis patients until almost July!"

"I don't remember doing any such thing," he says. He feels her laugh beneath his fingers. 

"That's ok. I'm covered in germs right now so your odds of staying healthy aren't that good. Especially not if you're going to keep doing that," she says gesturing to her head. 

"Is it bothering you?" He asks in an uncertain tone. She shakes her head under his hand. 

"No. It feels nice. It's helping my headache actually." 

"Could be the Tylenol that's doing that," he suggests. 

"Not this fast. It's a great drug but it's not exactly magic." 

He smiles. But the moment doesn't last. 

The overhead speaker announces that in his distraction, their plane has actually landed ahead of their anticipated delay time and has already deboarded its passengers. They are now calling the first boarding group so they need to get moving. He gathers up everything he can and this time he has to fight the urge to just pick her up and carry her into the damn plane. 

This urge he successfully subdues. 

Not only would the logistics of that be off with all the luggage and bags he's already carrying but he's pretty sure that if he tried to pick her up he might lose a testicle in the wrath that would follow. 

Instead he settles for helping her to her feet and letting her call the shots of what she needs by leaning into him as they move. 

At least he's helping a little bit. 

They make their way into the plane and they get a few concerned looks from the flight attendants as they catch sight of his partners face that looks as if it has been ritualistically drained of blood. He ignores their looks and head towards their seats. 

They have booked a center and an aisle. Being the smaller of the two when this happens she always takes the center seat without even asking but he stops her before she can and slides into the row. 

"Hang on," he says, shoving things into the overhead bin. "You'll have more room if you sit in the aisle." 

"Mulder I dont..." But he shuts her up with a good old fashioned Shhhhh. He folds himself into the center seat and then turns to help her sit down. She does so with a heavy flop. She buckles her seat belt and leans back against her seat but he shakes his head. 

"Scully," he says in a tone that says what the hell do you think you are you doing. 

He pushes the arm rest between them up and back into the seats instead, and he plops the pillow into his lap as he tugs on her arm and forces her to lay down.

"Mulder I don't need to lay all over you. You're already cramped for space being in the middle like that I don't..."

"Scully?" He warns. "Shut up." She does as he reaches across her and tugs at the blanket to make sure she's fully covered underneath. 

Her protests are silly anyway. This is only a half filled flight to the country's capital and the person that had the window seat in their row took one look at Scully and decided an aisle seat a few rows back looked better. 

Once he realized they had the row all to themselves he could have spread himself out more, but she was already starting to breathe in a deeper way that after years of road trips, signaled to him that she was just about to fall asleep. Instead he waited for them to taxi off and then he reclined his seat the inch that it allowed and he settled in for the two and a half hour flight home. 

When they reached cruising altitude, the flight attendant brought him a soda and as he relaxed, he let his hand fall back into her hair. He felt her sigh against him when he did and he smiled like a man that's just figured out nuclear fission. 

She was still radiating unnatural levels of heat but it was better. And even though he wasn't able to actually fix anything, he knows she's better off now than she was this morning, mostly because of him. 

He hasn't been able to claim that, that is the case very often in their friendship so he lets himself fill with pride that this time he's made her world just slightly less bad. 

They are still several thousand points away from being able to call it even but anytime he can make a dent in the insurmountable debt that he owes her, he counts that as a good day.


End file.
